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The site of Boncuklu Hoyuk, discovered during the Konya Plain Survey in Central Anatolia, is a 9th Millennium BC tell site, c.10kms north of the well-known site of Çatalhöyük in the Konya Plain. Boncuklu is the earliest Neolithic village settlement known in the Konya Plain and provides a window into the hunter-gatherer-forager to agriculturalist transition in Central Anatolia. It also yields evidence of local traditions in symbolism and household practice that foreshadow later development seen a thousand years later at Çatalhöyük.
The excavation project is directed by Douglas Baird, University of Liverpool (as was the Konya Plain survey beforehand), and researchers and students from (amongst others) the University of Liverpool, University of Queensland, UCL, University of Reading, and University of Bournemouth, collaborate on investigating the earliest appearance of village societies in this area, including questions of settlement practices, palaeoenvironments, and subsistence.
Louise Martin runs the zooarchaeological research at Boncuklu, in collaboration with Jessica Pearson and Caroline Middleton who undertake isotope research, and Yvonne Edwards (UCL) who has studied the bird bones. Results so far show the inhabitants of Boncuklu to have focused on wild boar and wild cattle hunting, alongside a broad spectrum of other terrestrial and aquatic resources. So far, no remains of domestic livestock have been found, which is significant since domestic ungulates are already in appearance in eastern Anatolia, the Upper Euphrates and Cyprus by the 9th millenium BC cal.
Related outputs
- Baird D (2010) The Boncuklu Project: investigating the beginnings of agriculture, sedentism and herding in central Anatolia. Anatolian Archaeology vol 16 pp 9-11
- Baird D (2009) The Boncuklu project; investigating the origins of sedentism, cultivation and herding in central Anatolia. Anatolian Archaeology vol 15 pp 9-12
- Baird D (2008) The Boncuklu Project; the origins of sedentism, cultivation and herding in central Anatolia. Anatolian Archaeology vol 14 pp 11-13
- Baird D (2007) The Boncuklu Project: the origins of sedentism, cultivation and herding in central Anatolia. Anatolian Archaeology vol 13 pp 14-18
- Baird D (2006) 'The Boncuklu Project; the origins of sedentism, cultivation and herding in central Anatolia'. Anatolian Archaeology vol 12 pp 13-17